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When you measure in fractions of 100, you call it a percentage. When you measure in fractions of 1000, you call it promille or per mil. There are even words for fractions of 10000 or 100000.

But what do you call it when you measure in fractions of 1?

apaderno
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wen
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    1/1 = 1, 2/1 = 2, 3/1 = 3... Where I'm from that's called counting. (^_^) – RegDwigнt Aug 06 '11 at 14:34
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    As @RegD says, your 'fractions of 1' are just plain old numbers. The body of this question doesn't fit the title. – z7sg Ѫ Aug 06 '11 at 16:05
  • @Jasper Loy You are right. I completely misunderstood the question. – apaderno Aug 06 '11 at 17:05
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    The original title (What do you call the scale [0..1]?) was much much clearer. I do not want to start an edit war... but I would suggest reverting to the first revision. Clearly the OP refers to the fact that 10%=0.1, 35%=0.35 etc – nico Aug 06 '11 at 18:02
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    @Jasper: it means (well, I interpret it as) decimal numbers between 0 and 1. – nico Aug 07 '11 at 06:26
  • @nico: that was exactly what I meant, thank you. :) – wen Aug 07 '11 at 09:50
  • Also, in case you're interested, fractions represented as one over some number (1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc.) are called "unit fractions". – Sam Feb 24 '12 at 23:32
  • It is called a "proper fraction": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraction_%28mathematics%29#Proper_and_improper_common_fractions. – Benjamin Jun 21 '12 at 15:29

3 Answers3

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Answering here from the perspective of a physical scientist.

Such comparisons are often dimensionless (say change in length over initial length, which is length/length = 1), and when they are we often say "fractional".

As in "the strain is the fractional change in length", or "here we compare the factional signal loss between...".

dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
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If you rewrite a percentage in the interval [0;1] then you get a proportion or simply a decimal number.

This, always keeping in mind that, for instance 0.1 = 10% = 100‰ = 1000‱

nico
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  • I feel that decimal number strongly implies (as it does) that you can go below 0.0 and beyond 1.0. However, proportion seems a decent alternative. – wen Aug 07 '11 at 09:57
  • @Pepijn: well, technically you can go beyond 1 (e.g. 200%=2) and below 0 (-50% = -0.5). – nico Aug 07 '11 at 16:50
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Depending on context, you can even use the word normalized. In fields that use statistical techniques, we use factors that change an arbitrary number into one that has the range [0,1]. Such factors are usually called normalization factors or normalizing constants.

They speak about it on the stats StackExchange site -- read the comments and note the tag used.

Community
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prash
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